HKMDB Daily News

Mystery

17 May, 2012
By Mike Goodridge

Dir: Lou Ye. China-France. 2012. 98mins

Lou Ye’s return to sanctioned film-making in China is anything but an artistic or thematic compromise. A twisted and dark portrait of the amoral rich, corrupt police and sexually promiscuous in the country today, it is based on a selection of stories culled from the Internet that reflect contemporary society. Although the central story leans towards the melodramatic, Lou’s confident blend of realism and poetry keeps it on track.

It’s rare to see an official Chinese movie that takes such a stark look at life today. Set in the rain-drenched city of Wuhan, Lou shows us an urban world of web and text-obsessed people, fast cars, designer fashions and Starbucks that could be any western city. Whether it will score a Chinese release is yet to be determined, but sales agent Wild Bunch should make more robust international sales on Mystery than the two films he made in exile – Spring Fever and Love & Bruises.

The film opens with a dramatic prologue in which two arrogant young rich kids race each other in cars through a tunnel just outside the city. Coming out of the tunnel, one of the cars mows down and kills a young woman walking in the driving rain and ploughs into a truck.

The story subsequently calms somewhat, as Lu Jie (Hao Lei) is befriended in her daughter’s playground by Sang Qi (Qi Xi) and her son and the two decide to have playdates in the future. Over coffee one day, Sang Qi confides in Lu Jie that she believes that her husband is cheating on her, the very same moment that Lu Jie looks out of the window and sees her own husband Yongzhao (Qin Hao) walking into the hotel opposite with a young girl. A distraught Lu Jie waits for them to finish their assignation and follows the young girl. This young girl, it emerges, is the girl killed in the pre-title sequence.

As Lu Jie faces up to her husband’s apparently rampant infidelity, the police are persuaded by the rich parents of the young men not to press criminal charges over the death of the girl. Her mother is paid off and only one cop who coincidentally used to date the dead girl presses for further investigation.

There’s sexual deceit, revenge, blackmail, and more murder before the film finishes, and along the way, virtually all the characters have sacrificed any sense of decency in the quest for material riches and sexual fulfillment.

Lou uses handheld camera to visceral effect but he is not beyond striking visual effects and a penchant for hard rain to heighten the drama.

Production companies: Dream Author Pictures, Les Films du Lendemain

International sales: Wild Bunch, www.wildbunch.biz

Producers: Lou Ye, Chen Xi, Nai An, Kristina Larsen

Screenplay: Mei Feng, Yu Fan, Lou Ye

Cinematography: Zeng Jian

Editor: Simon Jacquet

Production designer: Peng Shaoying

Music: Peyman Yazdanian

Main cast:: Hao Lei, Qin Hao, Qi Xi, Zu Feng, Zhu Yawen, Chang Fangyuan, Qu Ying

ScreenDaily

By MAGGIE LEE

Nightfall
An Irresistible Films, Edko Films, Sil-Metropole Organization, Film Development Fund of Hong Kong presentation of an Edko Films production. (International sales: Edko Films, Hong Kong.) Produced by Bill Kong, Ivy Ho. Executive producers Bill Kong, Song Dai, Ryuhei Chiba, Hugh Simon. Co-producer, Fan Kim Hung. Co-executive producers, Ren Yue, Cheung Hong-tat. Directed by Roy Chow Hin Yeung. Screenplay, Christine To Chi-long.

With: Nick Cheung, Simon Yam, Janice Man, Shawn Dou, Kay Tse, Michael Wong, Candice Yu. (Cantonese, English dialogue)

Gut-wrenching violence, classical music, daddy issues and Lolita complexes are grist for director Roy Chow Hin Yeung’s grisly mill in “Nightfall,” a Hong Kong thriller with a strong noirish flavor that stops short of lurid, thanks to the seasoned cast’s solid perfs. Chow’s slick if unremarkable helming shows visible improvement from his out-of-left-field debut, “Murderer,” though his repeat collaborator, scribe Christine To Chi-long, has swung from that film’s gag-worthy implausibility to its opposite extreme, belaboring a plot that’s perfectly tenable yet predictable every step of the way. Pic should slot easily into Asian genre fests and ancillary.

Echoes of Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” linger in “Nightfall,” opening with a staggeringly vicious prison fight in which inmate Eugene Wong (Nick Cheung) puts up a brave struggle but is outnumbered and mercilessly beaten. Later, he is released after serving a 20-year sentence, and immediately takes up spying on Zoe Tsui (actress-model Janice Man), a piano student whose father, Han (Michael Wong), is a renowned opera singer.

Renting a shack directly across from the Tsuis’ isolated country mansion, Eugene uses bugging devices to discover that Han is a volatile, abusive father. When Han is found murdered in a gruesome manner, inspector George Lam (Simon Yam) identifies Eugene as the prime suspect.

The pic’s Chinese title, “Big Hunt Down,” coupled with the gripping prologue, dangles expectations of the kind of propulsive, hard-boiled actioner in the darkly stylized mold of Dante Lam or Soi Cheang, or a Hong Kong rendition of the “Bourne” series. “Nightfall” turns out to be neither. The first chase scene doesn’t even happen until the 40-minute mark; an impressively maniacal mano-and-mano inside a cable car occurs 70 minutes into the film.

Essentially a drama-driven whodunit, the pic draws interesting parallels between George’s and Eugene’s respective pasts and their astute yet driven personalities, deepening the detective’s increasingly ambivalent role as the ex-con’s hunter and defender. However, the exposition lags, overstaying its welcome with a cumbersome crime-scene re-enactment accompanied by a long spiel that dryly clarifies every point.

Cheung’s role capitalizes on the thesp’s popular, paradoxical screen image as a psycho with heart, most memorably in “The Beast Stalker.” The fact that Eugene has a speech impediment and is a lone wolf and peeping Tom reps a formidable challenge for Cheung. Deprived of dialogue and the chance to interact with most of the other thesps, he nonetheless brings emotional heft to his bursts of violence.

Yam provides a subtly intense dramatic anchor as the story’s moral center. His scenes with Cheung are little more than staring contests, but they simmer with tension, while George’s partnership with junior detective Ying (singer Kay Tse) generates some playful and romantic vibes that could have been further developed to enrich the main story.

In brief flashbacks as the 19-year-old Eugene, Shawn Dou (”Under the Hawthorn Tree”) manages to channel the 40-year-old protag’s angst-filled expressions and body language despite the lack of physical resemblance. With her porcelain doll features and fragile, frightened look, Man fits her role and contributes to the disturbing prurience of Zoe’s exchanges with her father; however, the actress doesn’t have enough screen presence to carry the film as its chief catalyst and female protag.

Ardy Lam’s fluid lensing delivers crisp images of pristine natural scenery (something of a rarity for Hong Kong-set pics) and glittering neon-lit panoramas of the city by night; however, a consistent visual tone is absent, due to the jarring alternation between heavily saturated and garishly desaturated color textures in interior scenes. Sound is exceptionally clean and resonant, while composer Shigeru Umebayashi (”Trishna,” “In the Mood for Love,”) seamlessly shifts among edgy cello music, plaintive piano notes and sweeping orchestral melodies, repping the pic’s biggest treat.

Camera (color, widescreen, HD-to-35mm), Ardy Lam; editor, Cheung Ka-fai; music, Shigeru Umebayashi; art director, Wong Bing-yiu; costume designer, Phoebe Wong; sound (Dolby Digital) Kinson Tsang; visual effects supervisor, Leung Wai On; action choreographer, Jack Wong Wai-leung. Reviewed at Palace IFC , Hong Kong, March 11, 2012. (In Hong Kong Filmart.) Running time: 107 MIN.
Variety

Shanghai Calling

Cross cultural romcom Shanghai Calling delivers passably cute romance and lightweight comedy and also takes time - a bit too much of it for the film’s own good - to highlight the virtues of China in general and the city of Shanghai in particular. Clearly designed to appeal to both Asian and Western audiences this official US-China co-production is more likely to work for the former than the latter.

Having recently opened the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, the mostly English-language film is currently looking for a US distributor. China Film Group will release in China and prospects seem reasonably good in that country, Korea - where lead Daniel Henney is well known - and other Asian markets. The rest of the international marketplace will be a tougher sell.

Henney (whose Hollywood credits include X-Men Origins: Wolverine) plays Sam, a handsome and ambitious Asian-American attorney who reluctantly accepts a temporary job in Shanghai. Feeling, in spite of his ancestry, like a fish out of water, Sam takes on a tricky copyright case involving an American businessman and starts a romance with a well integrated American ex pat (played by Eliza Coupe, from What’s Your Number?). Subplots take in the love life of Sam’s new assistant (Chinese actress/model Zhu Zhu) and the business life of another American transplant (Twister’s Bill Paxton).

Making his debut as a feature writer-director, TV scribe Daniel Hsia gives the film an attractive look and lively style, finds some humour in the clashing preconceptions of Westerners and Easterners and punctuates the action with broader comedy moments.

But the film never quite sells its central romance and its apparent efforts to glamourise Shanghai and put the Chinese way of business in a positive light - the plot’s copyright villain isn’t who it first appears to be - often feel clumsy.

Production companies: China Film Co, Manifest Film

US sales: Preferred Content, www.preferredcontent.net

International sales: Aldamisa International, www.aldamisa.com

Producer: Janet Yang

Executive producers: Xia Zheng, Zhao Uting

Presenter: Han Sanping

Director of photography: Armando Salas

Production designer: Yu Baiyang

Editor: Pamela March

Costume designer: Wang Haiyan

Music: Klaus Badelt & Christopher Carmichael

Website: www.shanghaicalling.com

Main cast: Daniel Henney, Eliza Coupe, Geng Le, Zhu Zhu, Alan Ruck, Bill Paxton
Screen Daily